COMMENTARY: Ottawa mutes its first F-35 flight, and the pictures come from two photographers

Noon in Fort Worth

Nobody said a thing

Nobody announced anything when Canada’s first F-35 took off from Fort Worth, Texas, on September 23, 2026, around noon.

Not a release from Lockheed Martin, which builds it. Not a release from the Royal Canadian Air Force, which will fly it. Not a release from the Department of National Defence, which pays for it. Not a release from the Prime Minister’s Office, which put the purchase under review.

While Washington demands the full purchase and a provincial premier demands it be scrapped, the plane flew anyway. The only photos of the day come from enthusiasts.

It carries construction number AR-1. It will become the CF-35A. An F-35C escorted it as the safety chase plane.

On the intakes, the bilingual lettering RCAF-ARC. A roundel. The word Canada behind the cockpit. A discreet maple leaf on the tail.

A test flight. A production aircraft. In the country’s colours.

The Fontanas’ pictures

A fighter pilot waits a whole career for a day like this. The roar of the engine. The runway rushing past. The first turn.

Pictures of that day exist. They do not come from Ottawa.

They come from Gherardo and Victoria Fontana, two photographers who work with the website The Aviationist. They caught the takeoff.

The country’s first new fighter since the Hornets of the 1980s got its coverage from enthusiasts. Not a word from its owner.

The owner is us.

First flight, no official voice.

Three silences and one line

No release

Skies Magazine wrote it that same evening. The Royal Canadian Air Force confirmed the test flight. It issued neither a statement nor a release.

The Prime Minister’s Office made no comment.

No announcement. No ceremony, the magazine notes. No speech.

MiGFlug summed it all up the next day in one sentence. For a milestone in the largest purchase in the history of Canadian military aviation, “the silence is the story.”

This is no pocket-change purchase. The Ottawa Citizen puts the fleet at about $27 billion.

One line from the maker

It was the manufacturer that spoke, in a single line. According to AirMag, Lockheed Martin Canada announced on social media that the first CF-35A had taken flight.

It was the manufacturer that then referred questions to the Department of National Defence, according to the same magazine.

The department had not answered CTV News by the next day, AirMag adds.

One line. For a program this size.

And yet the line came from the seller, not the buyer.

The seller wrote one line. The buyer, none.

A photo of a signature

Fort Worth, February 2

The plane had already had a first. On February 2, Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, who commands the Royal Canadian Air Force, travelled to the Fort Worth plant.

A ceremony there marked a production milestone for Canada’s first F-35. Speiser-Blanchet signed the fuselage bulkhead meant for the aircraft. A military photographer captured the moment.

Normally, photos like that come out within hours, MiGFlug notes.

The original never came out.

A grainy photocopy

The Ottawa Citizen requested it under the Access to Information Act. National Defence refused to release the original. It provided a grainy photocopy.

The paper then asked for the records on the decision to withhold the image. Request filed on April 24. Refused as well. The Citizen complained to the Information Commissioner of Canada.

A photocopy is grey paper. Matte under the fingers. Faces turn into smudges.

Ottawa hid the photo of a signature.

What was so dangerous about that image?

A ceremony photo. A pen. A metal bulkhead.

Here is my reading. This silence is not modesty. It is an admission that Ottawa no longer knows how to talk about its own plane. The plane has become a card in its quarrel with Washington.

Withholding an image already says something.

Twenty-four years of waiting

A partner since 2002

The story of this plane is a story of delays. It has to be reread in order.

Canada joined the Joint Strike Fighter program in 2002, as a Level 3 partner, The Aviationist recalls.

Canada launched its Future Fighter Capability Project in 2017.

Canada chose the F-35A in 2022.

Canada announced the purchase of 88 aircraft in January 2023.

Canada put the purchase under review in March 2025, on Mark Carney’s orders.

Then silence.

The Hornets of the 1980s

In the meantime, according to MiGFlug, the country spent two decades not buying the plane. Governments changed. Competitions were launched, then cancelled.

The CF-188 Hornets, in service since the 1980s, kept flying. They outlasted every retirement date anyone had set for them.

2002. 2026. Nearly a quarter of a century.

Twenty-four years between joining and first flight. And when the day came, not one sentence.

Twenty-four years of waiting for a flight with no official witness.

Sixteen firm, seventy-two on hold

What has been bought

Here is what is firm. Sixteen aircraft.

Canada is contractually bound to take 16, according to a spokesperson cited by The Aviationist. They are in production.

Ottawa has also started paying for components for 14 more, according to Skies Magazine.

The rest is waiting. Of the 88 planned, 72 remain suspended pending the review, the Ottawa Citizen writes.

MiGFlug counts differently. Take away the 16 firm and the 14 under way, and 58 aircraft remain with no commitment at all.

Nineteen or twenty-seven billion

The same blur hangs over the bill. In 2023, the purchase of the 88 aircraft was put at about $19 billion, MiGFlug recalls.

The Ottawa Citizen speaks of about $27 billion to buy the fleet. Another $5.5 billion would be needed to reach full operational capability, according to a report from the Office of the Auditor General.

Two numbers. Two scopes. No release to reconcile them.

The taxpayer will pay. The taxpayer does not know how much yet.

Sixteen planes paid for, seventy-two waiting, zero sentences.

Under review until further notice

Tuesday, September 1

Defence Minister David McGuinty gave his version on September 1, according to CTV News.

Canada has a responsibility to acquire a fleet suited to its obligations, he said. At home. On the continent. In the world.

Then this sentence, which has to be read twice. “The F-35 acquisition is under review.” And right away: “It will remain under review until it’s no longer under review.”

“We will take the time we need to get this right,” he added. He spoke of a “massive and important decision.”

That is not a deadline. It is a loop.

The review, he said, weighs the industrial benefits, interoperability with NATO and NORAD, and integration with radar and missile-defence networks.

In the next few months

The next day, General Jennie Carignan, Chief of the Defence Staff, spoke of a decision expected in the next few months.

The review has been running for 18 months, MiGFlug counts. With no published conclusion.

Months, then. After eighteen others.

In late August, British Columbia Premier David Eby called for the contract to be scrapped, CTV News reports. When a friend kicks you in the back, he said in essence, you do not then buy $12 billion of fighter jets from that friend.

Who sets the end date of a review?

A review with no end date is a decision in disguise.

The caution being invoked

Not taking sides

The case for silence exists. It is serious.

An anonymous Defence source told the Ottawa Citizen that officials wanted to avoid any appearance of the military taking sides during the review, MiGFlug reports.

Stephen Fuhr, secretary of state for defence procurement, had said as much in July to the same paper. “It’s in a review. We shouldn’t be talking about it.”

Scott Clancy, a retired Royal Canadian Air Force major-general, believes the silence was ordered from above. It is now a political decision, he told CTV News, according to AirMag.

The argument holds up. Celebrating the plane would put a thumb on the scale. And Washington reads Canadian press releases.

Pictures already everywhere

And yet this flight settled nothing. It involved an aircraft Canada is bound to buy.

Announcing the first of the sixteen says nothing about the seventy-two.

The silence did not stop the Fontanas’ photos from circulating the same day. The silence did not stop the manufacturer from posting its line. The silence did not stop Skies Magazine from getting confirmation from the air force.

In other words, the secrecy fooled no one in Washington. It only kept Canadians in the dark.

Nobody was fooled. Nobody was informed either.

This secret hid nothing from Washington, only from us.

The F-35 business cards

A military that campaigned

I have to write what unsettles this reading. The military really did campaign.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, Royal Canadian Air Force generals argued for the purchase. And for deeper integration with the U.S. military. They did so while Donald Trump threatens to cripple Canada’s economy, then annex the country, the paper recalls.

There are the custom-made business cards touting the F-35 that a Defence director general handed out at a trade show in Ottawa, according to a CBC report on July 4.

There is Lieutenant-General Iain Huddleston, deputy commander at NORAD. An official of a lobby group tied to Lockheed Martin advised against the Gripens. Huddleston found the suggestion “insightful.”

There is the military police investigation, still under way, into leaks of internal documents that promoted the F-35 over the Gripen.

What the review demands

Finally, there is the technical fact, which bothers those who dream of another plane. In 2021, Defence gave the F-35 57.1 points out of 60 for military capability. The Gripen E got 19.8, according to figures cited by Radio-Canada and picked up by 19FortyFive.

The best plane on the list is the one nobody dares to show.

That is true. A government reviewing a purchase can require its officers to keep quiet.

And it does not change this. Silencing generals does not require hiding a plane from taxpayers.

A gag order targets people. The first flight of an aircraft the public pays for is a public fact.

Muzzling an internal lobby does not require turning out the lights.

Forty Gripens and a banner

Linköping, the reserved spot

The other silence in this affair is Swedish. Two countries. Two ways of keeping quiet.

In the Gripen final assembly hall in Linköping hang the flags of Saab’s eight customer countries, The Globe and Mail reported in early September. A ninth spot carries a white banner. It marks the place as reserved.

Was it for Canada? A Saab official smiled, shrugged and said nothing.

And yet Saab talks a lot. The company wants to sell at least 40 Gripens to Canada, 19FortyFive writes. That is the number that would make full production in the country viable.

It would be the first complete line outside Sweden, from part to finished plane, according to Saab. About 10 main partners and some 250 suppliers, according to the Globe.

Not one or the other, both

Saab’s chief executive, Micael Johansson, swears he is not trying to replace the F-35. “It’s both,” he said.

The Gripen still keeps an American part, the most important one. Its General Electric F414 engine is subject to American export rules, the Globe points out.

GE Aerospace and Magellan Aerospace signed a memorandum on July 22 to overhaul those engines in Mississauga, if Canada chooses the Gripen. Ottawa has said nothing publicly about such guarantees, the paper notes.

Saab also promises Canada sovereign control of the military software. And a classified program office in Montreal.

Two fleets mean two supply chains, two training pipelines and two maintenance cultures, MiGFlug warns.

Two manufacturers, two silences, and no timetable.

A signature that will fly until 2060

Inside the fuselage

Back to the February 2 bulkhead.

It carries a signature. It is now inside a plane that flies.

That plane is meant to serve beyond 2060, according to the government timetable cited by The Aviationist.

More than thirty years. Generations of pilots. An officer’s signature in cold metal, that no one…

The only public image of the gesture is a grainy photocopy, obtained through an access-to-information request.

I admit it: that detail is the one that stays with me. Not the billions. The photocopy.

The metal keeps what the archive refuses.

The pilots who wait

Canadian pilots, for their part, are getting ready. They are very excited about this technological leap, Scott Clancy told CTV News, according to AirMag.

They will learn the plane in Arizona. The public discovered it in enthusiasts’ photos.

February 2, a signature. September 23, a flight.

A country proud of its pilots owes them at least one sentence on the day their plane leaves the ground.

Hidden in the fuselage, the signature flew anyway.

Luke, Eglin, Cold Lake

Arizona first

The timetable, for its part, has not moved.

The Royal Canadian Air Force has stood up its first CF-35A training squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, according to Skies Magazine. Technicians will learn maintenance at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

The first aircraft is expected in Canada in 2028. Initial operational capability for a squadron, in 2029–30.

Full capability is planned for 2032–34, according to the public timetable cited by The Aviationist.

Luke first. Eglin next. Cold Lake after that. Bagotville too, where National Defence plans two squadrons.

The government’s timetable

The Aviationist sums it up this way. The program, thought to be under threat, carried on in silence and is on schedule.

That is the paradox. The production line talks. The government keeps quiet.

MiGFlug puts it bluntly: sixteen Canadian F-35s are going to exist, whatever Ottawa decides about the rest.

The program moves forward. It does not speak.

A plane that exists deserves to be named.

The line moves at its own pace. Public speech does not.

What this silence is for

A card in the negotiation

Here is what the silence does. It keeps a card in hand.

As early as 2025, U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra was already calling the review an irritant that complicates a trade deal, MiGFlug recalls.

The Ottawa Citizen writes that Washington has warned Canada of dire consequences if it does not buy more F-35s.

A celebrated plane is a card laid on the table. A plane kept quiet is a card still in hand.

Washington knows it. Lockheed knows it. The Canadian taxpayer can only guess.

On this point, Ottawa’s calculation makes sense. Tying a fighter purchase to a trade dispute, as Washington does, is a bad move against a NORAD partner.

The cost, shifted

But a card held too long ends up costing the one who holds it.

About 110 Canadian companies have won more than $5.2 billion in F-35-related contracts, according to 19FortyFive. They are waiting too.

And the CF-188s keep aging while the game is played.

A card is played once. A silence settles in.

Keeping a card does not require hiding the table.

The image belongs to the public

The next photo

Canada’s first F-35 has flown. It has photos. None come from the government buying it.

The next step will be delivery in Arizona. Then Cold Lake, in 2028.

And yet nothing forces the next milestone to unfold in the same silence.

A press release does not settle a review. It accounts for public money.

When AR-1 lands in Arizona, there will be another photo to take. It could come from Ottawa.

What we are paying for

Who owns the image of a plane Canadian taxpayers are paying for?

For now, two photographers and a manufacturer.

The government, for its part, keeps a photocopy.

A plane we paid for, shown by others.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• The Aviationist — AR-1’s first flight at Fort Worth, September 23, 2026
• Skies Magazine — the RCAF confirms the flight, with no release, September 23, 2026
• CTV News — McGuinty and Carignan on the F-35 review, September 3, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• MiGFlug — the milestone nobody announced, September 24, 2026
• Ottawa Citizen — the photo and records withheld by Defence, September 2026
• 19FortyFive — the offer of 40 Gripens built in Canada, September 2026